Sharing data across the enterprise
The Geospatial Component
ERP is a method to capture the essence of non-spatial, alphanumeric applications. While an ERP
system can address a company's financial business process, it does not directly support the
engineering, operations, construction, dispatching, mobile computing, or maintenance processes.
These processes deal with provisioning and sustaining the service delivery network, and the
applications fall into a unique environment of graphics, spatial data, and complex relationships not
found in the typical ERP alphanumeric environment. In this paper, the term Geospatial Resource
Management (GRM) is used to designate the integrated suite of applications that address these
processes and automate the provisioning and sustaining of the service delivery network.
GRM describes a new breed of solutions, including AM/FM/GIS, which are made available by
the latest technology. GRM applications include design change management, dispatch, service
analysis, outage analysis, mobile computing, trouble reporting, operations and maintenance,
enterprise viewing, access and update. These applications are interdependent, rely upon
Geospatial data, and share a common geo-facilities model.
GRM solutions provide an integrated suite of applications that allow the automated provisioning
and sustaining of the service-delivery network. These applications combine the geo-facilities
model data from engineering, distribution network management, and operations and maintenance
with ERP data from accounting, human resources, procurement, and project management systems.
The result of sharing this combined data with the entire enterprise is a GRM solution that
establishes new industry standards for open facilities model management with integrated graphics.
Our industry is realizing bottom-line results, including significant gains in productivity.
GRM systems provide advanced Geospatial technology to automate labor-intensive mapping,
facility management and engineering analysis work tasks through computer applications. They
offer the potential to become a key business strategy and Information Technology tools for
modern communications companies.
Benefits of Integrated Systems
You can achieve additional business value and benefits by integrating ERP within your
operational applications and systems. Often, these solutions provide you with operational
excellence in one aspect of your business. By linking to ERP, sharing information and passing
transactions, you may be able to improve both ERP and the GRM or other operational solutions.
The combination may just be the key to competitive differentiation.
For instance, the network provisioning and maintenance function, which is so vital to the success
of a communications provider, can be greatly enhanced by implementing a comprehensive
Automated Mapping / Facilities Management / Geographic Information System (AM/FM/GIS)
solution. Industry studies also show that if an AM/FM/GIS system is used for mapping, planning,
engineering purposes and it is a common system where information can be shared among different
relevant organizations, the benefit/cost ratio can be as high as four to one (B/C 4:1).
Sizeable Investment
ERP attempts to integrate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer
system (data warehouse) that can serve all those different departments' particular needs. Meta
Group recently did a study looking at the ERP Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), including
hardware, software, professional services, and internal staff costs. The TCO numbers include
getting the software installed and the two years afterward, which is when the real costs of
maintaining, upgrading and optimizing the system for your business are felt.
Among the 63 companies surveyed-including small, medium and large companies in a range of
industries-the average TCO was $15 million (the highest was $300 million and lowest was
$400,000). While it is hard to draw a solid number from that kind of a range of companies and
ERP efforts, Meta came up with one statistic that proves that ERP is expensive no matter what
kind of company is using it. The TCO for a "heads-down" user over that period was a staggering
$53,320.
Many customers initially underestimate the cost and effort required to convert their data for a GIS
project. The costs to convert the facilities data into the GIS is typically in excess of 50 percent,
and in many cases considerably more, of the overall costs to implement a GRM system. Reducing
these costs and ensuring that the correct data is populated into the GIS is a critical to the success of
the GIS project.
